Beyond the Printed Word 1999

1999 World Electronic Publishing Conference

14-15 October, Amsterdam RAI, The Netherlands

Daily News

450 Participants from 55 countries

The following are summaries of presentations at the IFRA/WAN World Electronic Publishing Conference, "Beyond the Printed Word."

+ Click here for Thursday, 14 October summaries

For more information -- including the soon-to-be-published Conference Report -- contact Joanna Blot, WAN, 25 rue d'Astorg, 75008 Paris France, Tel: +33 1 47 42 85 00, Fax +33 1 47 42 49 48. E-mail: joanna@wan.asso.fr

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Presentations, Friday, 15 October 1999

POSTED 18:21 GMT

"Business to Business"
Ulrich Dörflinger, Project Manager Online Services, Freinet, Germany

The six-year-old Freinet is a 100 percent subsidiary and the on-line arm of the Badische Zeitung of south-eastern Germany.

Freinet, however, is far more than a newspaper web site, though that is one of its components. It is also supplies a full range of services to its business customers in the on-line environment.

"We are building revenues in three areas," said Mr. Dörflinger. "We provide security management and web hosting, e-commerce opportunities, and on-line offers such as web design, programming and advertising. We also are thinking of moving into new areas, such as auctions."

Thus, in addition to the newspaper, Freinet has contracted to be the "home" for many business web sites, servicing them through an immense flexible central database that allows customers to update on-line information -- company reports, press releases -- directly.

"Our target is to be a complete service of the publisher for media customers," says Mr. Dörflinger.

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"Beyond Banners"
Christine Cook, Vice President and Director of Sales, The New York Times Electronic Media Company, USA

You've got to register to use The New York Times Online, and therein lies the heart of the newspaper's advertising philosophy.

Using the aggregate information collected from these registrations -- gender, e-mail address, age, postal code, country, etc. -- the company has developed a powerful offering for advertisers.

"Targeting is definitely the key to our success," said Ms. Cook. "We're able to deliver ads across several different aspects, and that differentiates us in the marketplace."

For instance, advertisers who want only women readers can get them. Or young people. Or if they want a specific geographic area. So, for example, a cosmetics store can advertise solely to women in the area around the store.

"We delivered 500,000 banners to women in a specific geographic region," Ms. Cook said of the campaign. Many "clicked through" and provided e-mail addresses for more information about the store's offering. "They were able to re-contact 10,000 of these people, which turned out to give them a higher conversion rate to sales in the store than any previous campaign they ever had run," she said.

Yes, but how can a newspaper without the prestigious reputation of the New York Times get potential users to register?

"We have nine and a half million registered users now, and the brand and pull of the New York Times is a large reason that is the case. But in every local market, there is an affinity for the local newspaper. Every newspaper has the opportunity to create a section of the site, or a specific value-added site, for its readers," she said.

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"Revenues without Content"
Stuart Garner, President and CEO, Thomson Newspapers, USA

When it comes to the internet, the strategy of Thomson newspapers is "how to couple our existing brand equity with a useful new medium to win new business, and profitable new business at that," said Mr. Garner.

Integrating all media products is the key, he said. "Everything we do should be market led, not an ego trip for some technology propeller-head who wants to drive us down a path he wants to go. Our customers are king, and their needs need to be met by a range of solutions, not one magical, electronic remedy."

"The newspaper has the chance to become the internet general contractor, integrating print with on-line, using our existing classifieds and run-of-paper advertising to jump start the strategy with the prospect of enormous growth down the track."

He cites the example of the many "bemused" people who feel the need to be on the internet to survive, but have no idea of what to do or how to do it. "At the moment they have to turn to a local web master who may well be operating out of a spare bedroom. Why not instead turn to the local newspaper which has credibility in so many different ways -- not least that it was around 100 years ago and has provided dedicated community service ever since. Not to mention that it intends to be around for another 100 years too -- albeit in a converged form."

He said the strategy is "expanding our existing strong local franchise and creating partnerships with our customer base." He explained how Thomson is going about it.

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"Trends in Classifieds"
Marsha Stoltman, Vice President, Marketing Relations, Editor & Publisher, USA

There has been important news in the past year regarding on-line classifieds advertising and its impact on newspaper classifieds, and perhaps the most important wasn't the doom-and-gloom forecasts being put forth by competing research firms, said Ms. Stoltman.

If those predictions come true, on-line classifieds, which today account for 1 percent of overall classifieds market, will account for 6.4 percent by 2004.

"That should be humbling. For all the talk about the growing importance of on-line classifieds, they likely won't represent even 10 percent of overall classified spending five years for now," she said.

Print classified in the US alone accounted for a massive 17.9 billion dollars in revenue last year, and was growing. On-line classifieds are growing too, but are they really destroying traditional newspaper classifieds? Ms. Stoltman says she would take gloom-and-doom predictions "with a grain of salt. There is something terribly speculative about trying to make predictions in a field that's so new."

Other news in on-line classifieds: beefed up content and improved searchability, all in the name of making sites more useful to consumers; a huge marketing blitz, including Hotjobs' two-million-dollar, 30 second commercial during last year's Super Bowl -- about half of the company's 1998 revenues, "gone, just like that"; new partnerships, and -- perhaps more importantly -- some new business opportunities for newspapers.

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These last presentations from the IFRA/WAN World Electronic Publishing Conference, "Beyond the Printed Word," are about what comes next: broadband, integration, digital ink.

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"Broadband"
Gregory Pasche, Vice President, Marketing and Business Development, Europe, Reuters New Media International, Switzerland

Content isn't king, says Mr. Pasche, but "Content is Key."

"Just providing content is not a viable business as the direct revenues will rarely cover the costs of production. Content is a means to attract, retain and guide users to direct revenue generating opportunities," he said.

He called content providers "the enablers" of new media, "and that is the basis upon which distributors should pay for content."

Broadband -- very high speed communication of digital media to diverse computing devices -- will make this even more so, said Mr Pasche, as it will offer new ways to provide services and deliver content.

"End users will have access to these services and content via a vast array of fixed and mobile devices. As content providers, our content will benefit from multiple yet interlinked distribution channels, all of which reaffirm the key role and hence value of content in the pursuit of new media revenues," he said.

"Integrating TV and Newspapers"
Heikki Hänninen, Director of Internet and Online Media Division, Helsinki Media Company, Finland

It is appropriate that Finland, the number one country in terms of internet connections per capita, would be the place for an experiment that combines newspapers and television through a high-speed cable "broadband portal."

Three newspapers -- Aanulehti, Turun Sanomet and Keskisuomalainen -- along with Helsinki Media, television stations TLF and MTV3 and Nokia -- launched a nine-month trial in 62 homes for the proposed "integrated publishing" service.

It worked like this: from a news summary, users selected a story they were interested in, or, through a user profile, stories of interest were directed at them. They would then receive, on screen, text stories and photos from a variety of stories, along with television broadcasts related to the same story.

"It was a triumph technically," said Mr Hänninen, "And for the consumer, they really got something out of it, it provided add-on value."

But it is still not clear whether it is a commercially viable operation, and the next step is to offer it to a "second phase" audience. "We do have some revenue from access as we're selling cable modems. If this revenue supports it, that's good. But if not, it is very difficult to see how to finance it," he said.

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"Digital Ink"
Jim Iuliano, President and CEO, E Ink Corporation, USA

Imagine if you could imbed a microscopic printer in a piece of paper and then connect to that paper and it would print itself, over and over again.

That's the concept behind digital ink. And what seemed like science fiction a few short years ago, is now a reality.

E Ink is about to launch the first commercial application of digital ink -- billboards and signs for the US retailer JC Penney, which will change them at all 1,500 stories simultaneously whenever it wants, with a pager signal.

But the ultimate goal is electronic publishing -- "true electronic books, true electronic newspapers," said Mr. Iuliano.

Imagine the applications for digital ink, which now is sandwiched between relatively thick plastic layers and reacts to a very small electrical charge to arrange itself into letters. Resolution is still poor, but the goal is to make it "something that looks like a piece of paper, feels like a piece of paper, and can change itself." A strip on the side of a smart card could tell you how much value remained. A watchband could be turned into a pager. And, of course, newspapers could be made that required no printing plants, no distribution -- a radio signal could be transmitted to change the stories on the pages. And you could take it everywhere.

Of course, digital newspapers are still on the drawing board. Nevertheless, "there are tremendous opportunities ahead," said Mr. Iuliano.

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